Sunday, 28 December 2008

reality is still an obstacle to hallucination

Our board games this year were decidedly retro, with an ancient copy of 'Careers' being amongst those played to the end. You had to decide whether to go for big business, or something risky like being an astronaut. Most players seemed to take the safe option to join show-biz or become uranium prospectors.

The recently acquired game was so old that the replacement rules were stated to cost 1/6d from Waddingtons, yet many of the money, fame and happiness choices and penalties still seemed to fit modern day decision making.

When we tried another old style game, about motoring around Ye Olde England, we did actually give up after 10 minutes. It was about as exciting as driving to Westfield Shopping Centre on Boxing Day.

The complex scoring system was in use as usual, with accumulated points from the mix of karaoke, movie quizzes and mad rabbit lawnmower racing on the Wii all progressively building towards our astronomic accumulated totals.

We don't usually add up the final scores, but the interim subtotal prizes of rubber band collections and balsa wood aircraft kits are something to behold. This year's pocket frisbee was much coveted, as were the 8 whistles which could create an entire musical scale.

We managed several whistled renditions of jingle bells before moving on to the banjo and mandolin.